If a solar salesperson is sitting at your kitchen table offering you a 1.99% loan, ask one question before you talk about anything else.
Whatâs the cash price?
Watch the number move.
Solar lenders donât fund a 1.99% loan out of kindness. They charge the installer a fee for the right to offer you that rate, and AmeriSaveâs 2026 financing guide puts the range at 15% to 30% of the system cost. On a $24,000 system, a 25% fee means you borrow about $30,000 instead. Green Energy Calculators pegs the industry average at 22%, more than $5,700 on a typical job, and walks through a $26,000 cash system that becomes a $32,500 loan balance.
You wonât find that fee on the quote. It isnât a line item. Itâs baked into what the panels cost.
The CFPB went looking at this in August 2024 and found the same machine running: these âdealer feesâ often increase the loan cost by 30% or more above the cash price. At the time, 58% of solar projects were paid for with loans. The report named the practice. It did not stop it.
The part thatâs new this year
The 30% federal credit for homeowners died on December 31, 2025. Lenders built a lot of these loan products around that credit, and plenty of them never went back and rebuilt.
AmeriSave describes the structure: a balloon or a re-amortization assumption that expects a sizable principal payment in the first 12 to 18 months, typically equal to what the old tax credit would have been. Miss it and the monthly payment climbs. Green Energy Calculators calls it the balloon payment trap and names the same cause, Section 25D expiring.
That lump sum was supposed to be your refund. There is no refund.
What this actually costs you
Be fair to the buydown. A 1.99% rate on a bigger balance isnât always worse than 8% on a smaller one, and over a long enough term the two can land close together. That part is your call.
Hereâs the part that isnât. Youâd be signing for a system that costs $26,000 in cash. Every dollar of that fee is principal rather than interest, so paying the loan off early doesnât shrink it, and selling the house doesnât shake it. AmeriSave figures losing the credit already pushed out-of-pocket solar costs up about 43% year over year, roughly $7,200 on a $24,000 system. The fee lands on top of that.
The bankâs bet is that youâll compare APRs instead of prices.
Do this before you sign
Ask for the cash price in writing. Then ask for the financed price with the cheap loan, also in writing. The gap is the fee. An installer who wonât give you both numbers has answered a different question than the one you asked.
Take the cash number to a credit union or your HELOC. Green Energy Calculators found credit unions posting solar APRs from about 5.94% to 8.00% with no origination fee, and HELOCs running roughly 6.5% to 8.5%. Run both offers through our solar savings calculator and compare total cost, not monthly payment.
Then read the payment schedule. Search it for âre-amortizationâ and âadjusted payment.â If your loan assumes a tax credit you canât claim, strike the clause or find another lender. Not optional.
Where the rest of your quote goes is in our solar guides, and our solar rankings compare whatâs on offer.
How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.